We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jon Paton a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Jon thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

I did a ton of research both online and in the kitchen. I traveled across the midwest making meals for friends and family, acquiring as much feedback as I could, I spent weeks putting the initial business plan together, did and re-did the math about a hundred times. I looked for commercial space for months, and when covid hit, an opportunity to rent a kitchen fell into my lap. Once we were open, it was a wild process to balance making, packaging, and delivering all the food with growing the business and spreading the word. We’re in our second, much larger commercial kitchen space that we have all to ourselves, cook for Ohio State Athletics and the City of Dublin, and have fulfilled more than 22,000 orders since early 2020. It’s been a wild ride.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I was born and raised in Dublin, Ohio, and knew I wanted to be a chef from a young age. I went to OU for a few fun but unsuccessful years, then moved to Chicago on 2 weeks notice to begin my journey of becoming a chef, working in the nicest places that would have me. After 5 years of working 80 hour weeks for very little pay, I had worked myself up to executive chef but realized that the lifestyle was unsustainable. I moved out to Dekalb IL, and began a career working for HyVee, an employee owned grocery store that operates in 8 states. I worked my way up to Assistant Director, and learned a ton about running a business along the way. in 2019, I lost my job unexpectedly and realized it was time to start my own business and put all of these hard-won lessons to good use!

My main goal with Fit Fresh is to provide nutritious, delicious meals for folks while charging way less than our competitors, and while also providing a great life for my employees. I start all of my staff at $18/hr, which is above the living wage here in Columbus. I’m also big on work life balance, making sure my folks don’t work more than 40 hours a week (most of the time), don’t have to work crazy early or late, provide them excellent benefits, etc. I basically wanted to fix all of the things that bothered me about traditional foodservice and retail industries. I’m doing my best to build Fit Fresh into the regional leader, but doing it in a responsible way.

I’m also really proud that we exclusively use recyclable or compostable packaging. The situation with our environment drives me nuts, so I’ve made sure that our trays are #1 home recyclable, and the vacuum bags we use can be recycled at drop-off facilities. It took me forever to actually source a lot of these things, and they’re much more expensive than traditional, non-recyclable packaging. You should see some of the flak I got from traditional plastic salespeople, really made me sad.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Oh wow… I’ve found that growing and running a small business is basically nothing but resilience. You’re essentially in a position where you foot the bill/responsibility for absolutely anything that goes wrong, which is all the time. A few weeks ago, I had stopped by the kitchen after all the orders had been packed and were awaiting delivery. In my hurry to grab something and get somewhere, I left a door open to one of our refrigerators, that had about $2500 worth of orders in it, ready to be delivered a few days later. One of my staff discovered my mistake the next morning, and let us know. My Sous Chef and I rolled up our sleeves, tossed out all the orders, then remade everything ourselves and got it all repacked and rebuilt that very day. We had a good laugh and moved on, but man.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Taking care of each and every client we have like they’re our best one, and always giving 110% when it comes to customer service. Having the highest quality product at the lowest price around doesn’t hurt, either! We treat each customer like they’re our biggest source of marketing, and that’s how we’ve acquired tons of new home delivery clients, tons of new gym and business partnerships, and more!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.fitfreshfast.com
• Instagram: fit_Fresh_Fast
• Linkedin: Jon Paton